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Ascension Raiding (Legacy)
This article was written by Epzilon. Note: This article is designed for players on the Legacy servers Andorhal and Laughing Skull. This is because many encounters on seasonal are reduced in difficulty or changed in order to compensate for the lack of build freedom for mechanics such as Wildcard and Draft Mode. Raiding on Ascension is different than on most servers. This is due to a combination of its classless style as well as additional custom mechanics added to the developers to many fights. This article will go over a few changes in some raids as well as different raid difficulties. It will also heavily discuss the etiquette of being a team player on Ascension Custom Content Many encounters on Ascension have different or new abilities in order to put a fresh coat of paint on Vanilla content. This section will give some example changes in Molten Core, Black Wing Lair, and the Temple of Ahn'qiraj. 'Molten Core' Molten Core has an interesting set of additional challenges including special achievements and Ulduar-inspired "hard modes". In order to activate these hard modes, you must use your Aqual Quintessence or Eternal Quintessence (obtainable through a Hydraxian Waterlord Quest Chain) on top of the rune during the fights in order to trigger them. Lucifron and Gehennas hard modes features instead require you to leave their additional minions alive. In addition, Ragnaros and Majordomo Executus don't have true hard modes. Examples of extra mechanics include: *Additional dogs spawn with Magmadar usually needing a second tank *Gehennas spawning extra fireballs that wander around the room until they explode and become damaging zones on the ground. *Arcane Tornadoes that pollute the room for Shazzrah, making his mechanics more difficult to deal with. *and more! These hard modes, in addition to yielding achievements of their own, also give extra loot on bosses (but do not increase the drop rates of of the Windseeker halves or of Sulfuras). The Achievements of Molten Core vary significantly in both objective and difficulty. Some tasks include beating every hard mode, a speedrun of the raid, or finding hidden objects around the entire raid that are surprisingly hidden. If you manage to complete enough achievements, you can earn a special magma-infused steed. 'Blackwing Lair' Blackwing Lair has a few fights changed for a new raiding experience. These act in order to make the raid both faster paced as well as more difficult, although the difficulty has been dropped as time past due to both new gear and balanced changes. Examples include: *Flamegor, Ebonroc, and Firemaw all being battled as the same time instead of 3 drawn out fights. (don't forget your Onyxian Scale Cloak!) *Chromaggus gonig through an entire loop of new breaths instead of only two that change, requring very specific tactics to outwit him. *Nefarian has new tricks of his own with a special shadow clone mechanic whose impact are as varied as the Heroes who fight him. *and more! 'Temple of Ahn'Qiraj' The Temple of Ahn'Qiraj (AQ40 for short), is an extremely dangerous raid with new mechanics for almost every boss. Examples include: *Spectral summons only killable by minds twisted by The Prophet Skeram. You may not see them, but the pain they inflict is real. *Viscidus splitting much, much more often and not needing frost damage to shatter him in addition to a, LOT, of poison. *Exploding suicide-bugs that guard Princess Huhuran, requiring a swift group of ranged players to take down before they blow up the raid group. Adaptable Raid Environments Ascension supports both 10 and 25 sized groups for all raid content. This means you can work with two very common sizes of players and schedule what content you do accordingly. It also means that you may have to switch roles or even get additional abilities and talents to cover a boss' requirement. '10 Man Vs. 25 Man Content' 10 man content is the most popular on Ascension and is often tuned the most appropriately as difficult, but rewarding content. Most bosses drop 2 items, whether they be regular items or static token drops (such as the class tokens from Ahn'Qiraj or the Desecrated Tokens from Naxxramas). Later bosses will drop one, if not more, additional items (such as sets of tier items from the end bosses of each wing of Naxxramas). Most fights will require 1-2 tanks and 2-3 healers. 25 man content drops on average around twice as much gear as 10 man, but obviously requires over twice the amount of players. Since it is more difficult to get that many people, fights are often significantly different in difficulty. For example, spreading out players for C'thun's eye beams can be tricky in 25 man as there is less room to spare. These fights require on average 1-3 tanks as well as 3-5 healers. This means you usually have proportionally more dps, but have about more players potentially messing up a mechanic. 'Being a Team Player' Fights on Ascension will often require differing amount of players in each roll as well as additional skills. This means that, in order to succeed in a group, you must be willing to change to what your group needs. Very often this will require two things: *A healer to have a fully prepared off-spec in order to damage a boss, or a dps having an off-spec healing build to assist in healing difficult fights *A tank having a prepared dps off-spec in order to damage a boss or a dps willing to switch to a tank build if necessary. This can be easily managed by having additional Tomes of Specialization (obtainable both in-game or off the Donation Store) that will store both sets of talents and abilities as action bars. It is recommended to have at least 2, but more is helpful as changing many abilities and talents for fights can get expensive in the gold deparment, so having extra specialization slots available to hold specs for certain fights (such as C'thun, Loatheb, or just more reckless builds for progression) can save you gold in the future. An example of a fight that is assisted by picking up extra skills is Princess Huhuran in the Temple of Ahn'qiraj. She uses a deadly poison that silences players while they have it. However, if many (if not all) members of the raid pick up the Shaman's Cleansing Totem, the poison can be easily dealt with. Another example is Gehennas in Molten Core. His Rain of Fire spell puts a damage over time effect on anyone hit by it. This ability can be removed with any ability that purges magical effects, such as the Paladin's Cleanse ability. Dealing with this yourself makes the fight significantly easier on the healers and makes you a more helpful player. Many more fights exist where swapping in extra abilities (such as Grounding Totem, Barkskin for non-tanks, or even a stun) can either make the fight easier or even possible for the group. It is a great idea to give some extra room in your build so you can move things around if needed without too big of an impact. Lastly, you may just want to maximize the amount of buffs the raid group brings as well as the best debuffs to put on the boss. You can work with your group to make sure multiple players don't take talents such as Improved Mark of the Wild or Improved Power Word: Fortitude. This will help make the group overall stronger. 'Willingness to Learn and Change' Almost no build is perfect. You should attempt to experiment to see if you can find new abilities or talents that can yield small to large increases in survivability, healing, or damage. Don't try to be too rigid in what sort of playstyle you use. Remember, while your fun is very important, your organized raiding group would enjoy being able to defeat more bosses. Attempting to improve what you have will let you do this more often. This is often how the best builds are created before they spread to other players and groups and become "flavor of the month". A Word to Raid Leaders: Make sure to remember that not everyone wants to switch to the current strongest build. Keep your team's wishes into account. Odds are, you can heavily improve what sort of style they want to play without forcing them to play something completely new. You'll eventually reach a fight where maybe your build is extremely difficult to use on it due to its mechanics. An example might include a hybrid (using both physical damage and spellpower-boosted spells) style build against AQ40's Twin Emperors. One of them takes half from magic and the other takes half from physical damage. This means that this style of build is more difficult to play on this kind of fight. Another example may include an extremely hard hitting boss such as Patchwerk, where the raid-healing benefits of a Heal over Time (HoT) build may pale in comparison to single-target heavy healer. Meanwhile, this single target healer would struggle on a fight with large amounts of area of effect damage, such as AQ40's Prophet Skeram. You may need to heavily adjust or have an alternate build ready for different fights. Ascension's classless freedom lets this sort of design flourish without requiring people to create whole new characters with different classes in order to progress. Overall, its good to be keep experiment and be ready to try something new if required. You may find out you love building as much as playing.